Where’s Romney’s outrage over Ted Nugent?

Hilary Rosen made a comment about Ann Romney last week that got media mauled and misconstrued. The Romney campaign, including Ann and her son Josh, jumped on the comment. But what gave the faux-troversy life was how quickly the Obama reelection high command threw the highly connected Democratic operative with no formal connection to the campaign or the administration under the bus.

So, what happened when (off his) aging rocker and Romney endorser Ted Nugent said some blunt and violent things about President Obama, his administration, the Supreme Court and Democrats at the National Rifle Association convention over the weekend? Not a whole lot.

Nugent said Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder “[don’t] even like the Constitution.” He said, “We got four Supreme Court justices who don’t believe in the Constitution.” And then he went stone cold crazy.

If you want more of those kinds of evil anti-American people in the Supreme Court, then don’t get involved and let Obama take office again. Because I’ll tell you this right now: if Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year....

But if you can’t go home and get everybody in your lives to clean house in this vile, evil, America-hating administration I don’t know what you’re made of. If you can’t galvanize and promote and recruit people to vote for Mitt Romney we’re done. We’ll be a suburb of Indonesia next year....

Our president, and attorney general, our vice president, Hillary Clinton, they’re criminals, they’re criminals. And if you take that adamant ‘we the people’ defiance, remember we’re Americans because we defied the king. We didn’t negotiate and compromise with the king, we defied the emperors. We are patriots, we are bravehearts. We need to ride into that battlefield, and chop their heads off in November.

Now, it might be tempting to write Nugent off as a right-wing gun totting crank. After all, who talks like that and expects to be taken seriously in the realm of presidential politics? But what makes Nugent’s nuttery alarming is that it has the tacit endorsement of Romney.

See, Romney sought out the rocker’s support. Nugent made the announcement via Twitter on March 2.

after a long heart&soul conversation with MittRomney today I concluded this goodman will properly represent we the people & I endorsed him

Team Romney was so excited about the Nugent nod that Tagg Romney pom-pomed it via Twitter.

Ted Nugent endorsed my Dad today. Ted Nugent? How cool is that?! He joins Kid Rock as great Detroit musicians on team Mitt!

So, we have a guy who says incendiary things. A guy whose support was actively sought by the candidate. A guy whose support was championed by said candidate’s son. But now that it is called on to disavow and condemn Nugent’s poisonous words, all the outrage that Team Romney fired upon Rosen seems to be depleted.

“Divisive language is offensive no matter what side of the political aisle it comes from,” said Romney spokesperson Andrea Saul. “Mitt Romney believes everyone needs to be civil.”

This doesn’t cut it, folks. Nugent accused the president of the United States, the vice president, the attorney general and four justices of the Supreme Court of not liking or believing in the Constitution. And he did so in vivid, if not vile, language.

Until the candidate condemns the rocker, we should all assume he’s fine with that kind of talk from a surrogate. After all, if then-Sen. Barack Obama had to publicly condemn his pastor who said in a 2003 sermon “God damn America as long as she keeps trying to act like she is God and she is supreme!” then Romney should do the same with Nugent. That he won’t speaks ill of him and the campaign we can expect him to run in the fall.